The Drama of Jimmy Connors

There he was, Jimmy Connors, and to be truthful, it was a little strange, to find the raffish tennis icon looking so refined—dignified, really—in the upstairs lounge of the Peninsula Hotel, a posh fortress of decorum off Fifth Avenue. He was dressed in a blazer, a tie and sharply-ironed slacks, and he was sipping an afternoon iced tea, calling no attention to himself. He politely introduced himself and summoned a waiter. Over more than an hour he never cursed or crudely gestured or spoke harshly of others. When his phone rang, he apologized for it ringing. When it rang again, he apologized again. He was a beacon of civility. Yeah: Jimmy Bleeping Connors, one of the best and brashest who ever was.

It is probably not accurate to say that Connors has found serenity—that word and Connors should never mix—but there is clearly a comfort, or at least a decompression that has come with aging. At 60 (60!), Connors is not the bowl-haircutted thumper who once stalked baselines at the U.S. Open, Wimbledon and elsewhere en route to eight career singles grand slams. But the hair is still brown, lightly parted, and there was a little simmer that lurked beneath those fine clothes, a competitive spirit that never really went away. Yes: Connors wishes he could still play professional tennis. He says he'd love to play Novak Djokovic, currently the world No. 1. Of course he would. "I like the way he plays, the effort he gives," Connors said of the Serbian champion. "He would be the one guy I would have loved to have played."

The Sports Retort

If you saw Connors play tennis—furious, relentless, like a dog after a stick—you'd give him a chance. You'd probably give him much better than a chance.

Now there is an autobiography, in stores this week, called "The Outsider," and the title tells you everything in two words, how a man who is on every all-time list and helped define the sport still considers himself on the margins, of the club but not quite in the club. It's a chip that clung to Connors his whole career, from his upbringing in East St. Louis to his long stretch as world No. 1 to that magical stunner in Queens when a 39-year-old Connors clawed through five sets to beat Aaron Krickstein on his way to the Open semifinals. He viewed himself as an entertainer, which is an entirely different thing from being a crowd-pleaser. He could be rude and unlikable, but in his view, that dramatic tension helped lift tennis out of its country club cobwebs and into a brilliant stadium spectacle. To Connors, it didn't matter if you were for or against him—as long as you were up on your feet, spending that money, satisfied. "We had to be more than just tennis," Connors said, sipping at his iced tea. "We had to be something special, to get that fan to come watch what we did."

ENLARGE

Connors holding a T-2000 in New York last week.
Andrew Kelly for The Wall Street Journal

His style was not for everyone, and he knew this. Connors had already taken a public scolding for a personal detail in his book about his youthful relationship with the great women's champion Chris Evert, and there was something very Connors-ian about this episode, the barreling forward, and to heck with the blowback. At times, "The Outsider" reads both like a memoir and a riposte, a sharp two-handed backhand down the line from a champ who freely cops to selfishness, stubbornness and shortcomings as a husband. But the book is also curt and funny, a blast of golden-era detail. Connors straddled a magnificent run of tennis history, playing against Laver, Rosewall, Newcombe, Ashe, McEnroe, Borg, Becker, and Lendl, among others—a period of dynamic revolution in on-court strategy and technology (Connors, of course, long holding out with his trusty fly-swatter, the Wilson T-2000). There are comical episodes of partying and mischief with characters like Ilie Nastase; admiration societies with everyone from John Wayne to Marlene Dietrich, even the jarring tidbit that Merv Griffin once considered Connors as Pat Sajak's replacement on Wheel of Fortune.

Not long ago, Andre Agassi published a thoughtful autobiography in which he revealed his simmering childhood hatred for the sport that propelled him to fame. Connors, a young star ushered into the sport by his late mother/adviser/coach, Gloria, carries no such regrets. The passion for tennis lingers. Fiercely. Late in "The Outsider," Connors offers that "writing this book almost pisses me off, because I have to go back and remember how I spent my life doing something that I loved, and now it's over."

There was that old edge, a hint of that memorable Connors growl. Connors was respectful about today's great players, admiring their talents and paychecks and athleticism (he had particular praise for Spain's David Ferrer, knocking at the door of the Big Four of Djokovic/Federer/Nadal/Murray.) But tennis is different now. Everybody knows it's different. It's polished. Pretty. Slick. Safe. Manicured for corporate suites. There was plenty of beautiful tennis today, but a wild and maddening and triumphant career like Jimmy Connors's will never happen again.

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